Shattered Knight

by Tim Radley

KoTOR: Eight months on from the fall of the Star Forge the expected peace has not come to the Republic. The news of Revan's return has become a source of schism and conflict within the galaxy, and Revan himself has his own demons to face.

3. Into the Hutt's Lair

3. Into the Hutt's Lair

It was called the Eye of Simus – a centre of calm no more than fifty miles across, around which span a perpetual, millennia old storm in the atmosphere of the Dantalus VI gas giant. Vast walls of dark cloud hundreds of miles deep loomed imposingly around the Eye, flickering constantly with multicoloured flashes of lightning. Inside the eye itself though, all was tranquil and still.

At the centre of the Eye, an object floated like a gleaming silver pupil. Drawing closer, this pupil resolved into a floating citadel – an intricate mass of archways, domes, soaring spires and sumptuous gardens protected from the vagaries of Dantalus VI's atmosphere by translucent force shields and held aloft by hundreds of repulsors. Against the walls of storm clouds, it looked impossibly tiny and fragile, little more than a child's toy – except that the scale of the landing pad on one side of the structure indicated it was probably over a mile across.

A waterfall burbled in one of the gardens, birds and insects chirruping in the carefully regulated air.

A man and woman walked through that garden hand in hand, crossing a glass bridge that arched above a fast flowing stream. They were beautiful – although it was a blankly symmetrical, too perfect kind of beauty – and so utterly alike that it seemed they could only be twins. Golden haired and glowing, constantly smiling, there was something unreal about them, and the exactly precise unison of their every movement was decidedly eerie.

A pair of gates opened before them automatically, and then they were walking through tastefully decorated marble clad halls.

They passed by others on their way – slaves by the discreet metal collars that they wore – without so much as a glance.

All of the slaves were of species that were considered pleasing to the eye judged in human terms – humans themselves, Twilek's, and Zeltrons making up the majority – and all of them were particularly attractive members of their species. Every one of them had the same vacant look in their eyes, dressed to decorate and please the eye like pretty, life-sized dolls. Watching the slaves' movements for any length of time tended to put an observer in mind of droids – something that was mechanical and not entirely natural.

More doors swung open before them, admitting them to a vast central audience chamber. A transparisteel roof let in light from the Dantalus system's yellow sun, luxuriant vegetation growing up and around ornate pillars, the air warm and humid like a tropical arboretum.

". . . M-My Lord Auza, I swear to you, I will not fail you again. P-Please, if you give me the chance I will redeem my mistake . . ." The speaker, a human male in his forties, dressed in grey Sith military uniform, stammered to a halt, swallowing heavily.

"It is not so much your mistake that worries me, Captain. All of us make mistakes from time to time – perhaps even myself upon occasion, I might venture." Darth Auza's voice held an unpleasantly liquid, almost gurgling undertone.

"M-My Lord?"

"No, what I find . . . disappointing is your efforts to hide your error and pass the blame off onto others. I am not a harsh master, Captain. All I ask from those who serve me is a modicum of competence and honest endeavour. I do not think that is too much to expect, do you?"

"N-No master." A glistening bead of sweat trickled down the side of the Captain's face.

The golden haired twins came to a halt a couple of paces behind him, flanking him on either side. The muscles in the back of the Captain's neck tensed visibly.

"Excellent." Auza smiled. It was a grisly spectacle. But then, everything about Auza was rather grisly.

Reclining on a gigantic velvet-cushioned throne, the Sith Lord must have weighed in at somewhere around the eight hundred pound mark, draped in black cloth voluminous enough to serve a more normally sized human as a tent. The skin of his huge pasty-white moon face was so rough and dry that it looked scaled, and numerous transparent tubes connected into his corpulent flesh – back-up for internal organs that were too damaged and palsied to keep his body functioning under their own power anymore.

A surprisingly delicate hand gestured at the air. "Celyanda, please be so good as to show the good Captain here out. I expect that he wants to dwell upon what we have discussed."

"Master." The twins' perfect lips moved in stereo, their voices a sweetly symphonic duet.

The Captain started to stammer his thanks even as a pair of matching lightsabers were igniting simultaneously with a soft snap-hiss. The blades shone with pure white light and flashed together in lightning fast strokes. Not even having time to flinch, the Captain collapsed to the floor in three neat segments.

"Mercy has no place in a Sith. You should know that, Captain."

Next to Auza's cushioned throne a holoprojector flickered on, displaying a slender figure robed and cowled in black.

"Most distressing." Auza let out a gurgling sigh as he watched the twins moving efficiently to tidy up the cauterised body parts. "And so early in the morning too. There are times, my apprentice, when I truly wonder over the path I have taken, and the heavy burdens that have fallen upon me." One of his hands groped for a metal bowl beside him. It fished out a large, black beetle-like creature, which wriggled in his grasp as he held up in front of his face, peering at it intently.

"I presume, since you had me witness this, master, that an object lesson was intended." The black clad hologram's voice was emotionless: female, but hardly feminine.

"Hmm?" Abruptly Auza gulped the beetle into his mouth. There was a wet crunching sound, followed by a truly hideous, slurping, sucking noise. A moment or two later he fished the fractured carapace from between his lips and discarded it in a metal bucket. "Oh, I wouldn't read too much into it, my apprentice."

"But nevertheless, I get the definite sense that you are not entirely pleased with me."

"Well, Revan is still alive, hmm? I recall us agreeing that this was a disagreeable state of affairs, and one that should be rectified at the earliest opportunity. Am I mistaken in this recollection?"

The hologram bowed her head. "No, my master. Nevertheless, not wishing to make excuses, but matters have not worked out entirely to our disadvantage."

The twins had finished gathering up the Sith Captain, and stood motionless, waiting for orders. Auza gestured at them dismissively. "Dispose of him however is most convenient, Celyanda, and leave us."

Auza's attention returned to the hologram. "Oh indeed, my apprentice. One can find good in almost any situation, I've found. And the Jedi Council's fate certainly raised a smile. But now that he has escaped Republic custody, I'm minded to feel a tiny bit concerned. Whilst he still lives there will always be some who doubt my claim upon his former title, whether he truly wants it back or not."

The holographic figure bowed once more. Moving as one, the twins turned on heel and started to walk away. "I shall endeavour to correct that state of affairs at the earliest opportunity, my master."

"Indeed. But do please take care, my dear. I would hate to lose such a promising student . . ."

The conversation faded from the twins' earshot.

-s-s-

Tamar drew a card from the Pazaak deck and turned it over distractedly. A five, which took his total to sixteen. Briefly, he considered playing the last card in his hand and standing on nineteen, but he was already two sets to one down, and his opponent had a card left in his hand too. He waved that he passed. His mind really wasn't on the game.

Jolee drew a six, taking him to eighteen. With a murmur of satisfaction, he augmented that with a two from his hand. Twenty. Again. He sat back in his chair, fingers interlaced behind the back of his head, and smiled serenely.

Next up Tamar pulled a nine. Twenty-five and bust.

"I make that six games in a row. You don't seem to be taking this seriously."

Tamar shook his head. The game was way down his priorities right now. "Jolee, how is it that a Sith Lord stroll can stroll unimpeded into the grand Jedi temple on Coruscant, walk its halls completely unnoticed, and then kill the Council without any of them sensing a thing, before walking straight out again, unchallenged?"

A slight pause. "I have no idea. It's impossible."

Tamar looked at Jolee sharply, sensing he was being mocked. "Impossible?"

"Or so both the Jedi and Sith believed, I'm sure. Which is why the Council weren't looking out for it, and the Sith never tried it before. They both knew it was impossible, and you'd have to be a complete moron to even think of trying. I'd venture that it was very nearly as impossible as a Jedi walking into the Sith Academy on Korriban unchallenged and graduating head of his class without anyone suspecting."

He grunted softly. Point taken.

Jolee swept up his winnings – a pile of nuts and bolts. "Another game . . .?" he started. Tamar idly reached across and touched the last card Jolee had played – the +2.

"Hey, don't do that . . ."

Tamar bent the card fractionally. The image on it flickered wildly. +1. -6. +3. -4. He fixed Jolee with a long, level look. "A wildcard? Cheating in a game for nuts and bolts? I'd like to say I was shocked . . ."

"Hey, I was just testing to see if you were paying attention. Which obviously you weren't, since it took you this long to catch. Very sloppy I must say. A Jedi needs always to be mindful . . ." He trailed off as Tamar continued simply to look at him and coughed. "Anyway, you were saying?"

"I was?"

"Yes, yes. You were."

An involuntary smile cracked across Tamar's lips. "So, anyway, cheating aside, I was saying . . . how is it possible that the council didn't sense the Sith Lord's presence so close to them?"

"Pretty obvious, I'd have thought. They weren't looking because they knew she couldn't possibly be there."

"But I felt her."

"Because you knew her. And even then only when it was too late to do anything about her," Jolee pointed out. "Besides, how many of the council do you think are stronger in the Force than you are?"

He shrugged. It wasn't the sort of question he'd considered. "All of them, I would imagine."

Jolee snorted, as if Tamar had made a bad joke. "Vandar perhaps was, although I still wouldn't have put any vast amounts of money on it. Look, can you honestly imagine any of that lot fighting their way through the Star Forge and defeating Darth Malak right at the heart of his dark source of power?"

"I'm a soldier. Fighting is what I do. Possibly the one thing I'm any good for. But I'm not stupid enough to believe for a moment that how well you swing a lightsaber has anything much to do with your strength in the Force."

Maybe," Jolee shrugged. "But don't let titles fool you either. A title just means you've stuck around in one place long enough for someone to pin some rank on you." He shook his head. "No, Jedi as naturally strong in the Force as you and Bastila very rarely make it to become Jedi Masters, let alone part of the council."

"Why not?" Tamar asked, not entirely sure he wanted to hear the answer.

"Because," he said softly, "most of the really talented ones either die young or fall to the darkside. Either that or they go insane."

"Well, there's a comforting thought. Death. The darkside. Insanity. Oh, the choices."

"I've seen it time and again. It comes too easily for them, you see. The really naturally Force strong don't have to learn the same discipline and control as the rest of us. They don't acquire the same wisdom and self-limitation, because they can just wave their hands and make things happen, easy as breathing. It makes you reckless and headstrong and arrogant."

Tamar nodded. "I've been down that path, haven't I?" It was an entirely rhetorical question.

"But not this time." Jolee was looking at him intently.

Tamar let out a breath, stretching in the cramped metal chair. He gave a slight forced chuckle. "No, this time I get to make an entirely new set of mistakes. Don't think I don't appreciate the chance."

Before anything else could be said, there was a loud crash from the next room. A moment later Suvam Tan could be heard, swearing in Rodian. "Damn Gizka . . ."

Tamar stood up and went to take a look.

"Hey there, Mr. R." He jolted slightly at the cheerful greeting from right beside his ear.

Suvam Tan had hired a pair of Defel brothers as bodyguards after the incident with the Trandoshans. Defels were a rather odd species with hide that could somehow partially absorb light, making them resemble walking shadows. They were masters of stealth and very effective fighters, and if you weren't paying attention, it was quite possible to walk within inches of one of them without ever noticing. Like now for instance.

"Morning . . . Kreish," Tamar hazarded after a moment's pause. It was virtually impossible for a non-Defel to distinguish between individual members of the species based solely on appearance. Only the Force gave him any guide at all.

"And a mighty fine one it is too, Mr. R," Kreish added. Somehow, cheery affability was not a trait that Tamar had expected from a Defel, to the point of it being somewhat disconcerting.

Suvam Tan was down on his knees, trying to sort through an array of spilled components where three large boxes had been knocked over. The offending pet gizka was cowering in a corner beneath a worktable, apparently intelligent enough to realise that it wasn't particularly popular at that moment. "This is going to take me all day to sort out," he lamented.

Yuthura had also come to investigate the cause of the uproar. She nodded to Tamar in greeting, then – after a moment's hesitation – knelt down beside Suvam. "Let me," she told the Rodian. Tamar could feel a vague ghost of discomfort and embarrassment from her, as if this kind of trivial interaction required a special effort on her part.

Abruptly about a third of the spilled parts, all of the same size and type, separated out from the spilled mess and floated up into the air. Tamar could feel the subtly delicate threads of Force she was weaving as she manoeuvred them into one of the boxes. Once that was done, a second lot of matched components lifted into the air and deposited themselves into a second box. It was quite impressive. Not so much the levitation – an apprentice Jedi could do that easily – but the fact that she could do it while picking out one type of component from the whole jumble of others so apparently effortlessly; that took real skill.

"Um, if you're bored, I've got lots of other boxes that need sorting," Suvam Tan said hopefully when she'd finished.

Yuthura simply looked at him.

"Erm, guess not."

"An exercise my teacher used to make me do, though with different shaped beads rather than circuit components." Yuthura said quietly as she came alongside him. He noticed, as he looked at her that the sling was gone from her arm. "Inanimate objects may not connect to the Force directly, but they still leave imprints upon it. It's easy enough if you practise." Then, abruptly: "You have something you want to ask me."

Tamar didn't manage to hide his surprise very well.

She smiled slightly, little movements of her head tails indicating a degree of genuine amusement. It faded quickly. "Logic dictates you had to ask. I didn't need any special Force sense; just some commonsense." She made a gesture. "Shall we walk?"

He nodded agreement, falling into stride with her. He paused fractionally before asking the question she apparently knew was coming: "Do you feel capable of doing some acting?"

She didn't need to ask what he meant. "To the Sith I am a traitor, Tamar. I will not be forgiven for walking away. If I'm caught I will be interrogated, then executed summarily." She passed him a data card.

On it was a picture of her in grey Sith uniform, a brief written background, and a genetic fingerprint. There were also two sums of money. The first was merely extremely large. The second, directly below the first, could buy a person anything from a top of the line capital ship to a small moon.

He let out a low whistle. "At least they seem eager to take you alive."

She looked at him sourly. "Since alive likely means a prolonged period of torture followed by an equally prolonged death I struggle to see it as much of an upside."

"No, alive is good," he insisted. "Easier to dodge. Nobody's going to want to risk losing that much money by sniping your head off from a couple of miles away."

"What a comforting thought."

He opened his mouth to apologise, feeling a burn in his cheeks that hopefully his skin colouring disguised, but she continued over him. "I did not say I wouldn't do it, Tamar. I will, because you are the one to ask me. I'm just saying that it will not be a simple thing."

Tamar felt something clench painfully inside his chest at her words. "Don't do it because I asked you to. If you don't think it will work – if you don't want to, or have any doubts at all – say no."

"I have all the doubts in the world. But I can't say no."

"You can always say no."

She laughed – a low, throaty sound. "No Tamar, I can't. And you know above anyone exactly why I can't. Now stop trying to dissuade me from something that we all need, and tell me the details of your plan." She tilted her head as she looked at him. "You do have a plan I take it?"

After a pause, he nodded. I always have a plan, don't I?

They stopped walking in a cluttered work area, standing side by side together in front of a view port overlooking a small, dirty grey snowball of a planet. Once the Aqualish had tried mining this world – hence the spacestation – but conditions had been too difficult to make it worthwhile. Their facilities had stood abandoned for decades.

"We've both seen the newscasts," he began. "As far as most of the galaxy is concerned you're Darth Revan's new apprentice. You helped destroy the Jedi council. Far from being a traitor, you did what any ambitious Sith would – you chose the path of power and joined the winning side. You are, in fact, the second most powerful Sith in the entire galaxy, herald of the return of the true Dark Lord as he comes forth to reclaim his rightful crown."

"Interesting spin." She gave a dark, almost helpless sounding laugh. "You know, horrible as all this is, I can't help appreciating the irony of it."

He grimaced, but she cut him off before he could say anything. "And no more apologies Tamar. You have nothing to apologise to me for."

He wasn't sure he agreed with that, but he didn't press. "You said that Auza is unlikely to agree to meet me directly?"

"Not a chance," she confirmed, head tails flicking emphatically. "He knows you from the time you assumed the mantle of Dark Lord. You're one of his favourite anecdotes, in fact. He just loves to tell how he was the first of the Sith to acclaim you as Dark Lord. How he made you, even."

"Made me?" Tamar's lips twisted distastefully. He didn't like the sound of that one bit.

"Oh, yes." Her tone was darkly amused "Made you. From what I gather, you – Revan – had come before the Grand Sith Council on Ziost, a fleet at your back, demanding that they acknowledge you as the rightful ruler of the entire Sith Empire. Naturally the Sith Council refused you out of hand." She displayed pointed white teeth. "Six dead council members later, Auza saw the wisdom of your demands and proclaimed you Darth Revan, Dark Lord of the Sith – him being seventh in line having absolutely nothing at all to do with his decision. I paraphrase of course. Auza himself tells a much more noble and dramatic tale."

Tamar digested the information. It was always strange hearing about his former self, able to remember none of it, and not knowing how he should react. Recently, he could never quite manage to feel quite as guilty as he thought he should, and even then, the guilt seemed to be about the wrong things.

"The critical point being," Yuthura continued. "That – underneath all his bravado – Auza is absolutely terrified of you. And now he's gone and laid claim to your old title." Her head tails gestured an emphatic negative. "He's not going to voluntarily allow you within a dozen light years of him, even if he does believe you're on the Sith's side again."

"But he has no reason to feel afraid of you, does he? If you were to contact him on my behalf, offering an alliance – he might find it . . . intriguing enough to agree to meet you in person."

After a lengthy silence, she nodded. "He might."

Or he might just try to kill her out of hand. Both of them knew that very well. To a large extent it depended on how much Auza knew about what had really happened on Coruscant, and how much could be bluffed.

"I'll need a spaceship," Yuthura said emphatically after a pause. "Something small and armed for preference – appropriate for the apprentice of the Dark Lord, that I can pilot on my own."

"On your own?"

She looked at him patiently. "You can't come with me, Tamar. We have to assume that Auza knew what you looked like beneath the robes and mask, and if he gets even a hint of someone matching your description . . ."

"But it won't be me with you," Tamar turned away from the view port and began searching through some of the clutter filling the room. "Now I'm sure I saw it here earlier . . ."

"Tamar . . ."

"What about the Defel's skyrunner do you think?" he said conversationally as he continued searching. "I'm sure I can persuade Kreish to loan it to us. It's hyperspace capable, will accommodate two in relative comfort, and is based on a modified Aratech patrol-ship design. Packs quite a punch – I'd take it up against a Sith fighter any day." He made a muttered exclamation of triumph, pulling something out from the back of a shadowed recess. "Here we are. I knew I'd seen it lying around." He held up the helm of a suit of Mandalorian armour for her inspection.

Yuthura looked nonplussed.

"I may not be able to go with you, but Canderous Ordo can. Your own personal Mandalorian bodyguard and servant. Auza surely can't object to you having a little back-up?"

"I thought I heard Jolee saying that Canderous was with a Republic taskforce on the outer rim?"

Tamar made a tutting noise. "He doesn't have to be though, does he?" He lifted the helmet on over his head, and abruptly his voice became several degrees gruffer, the accent altering substantially. "I'm here if you want something doing right."

Yuthura shook her head, smiling in helpless resignation.

-s-s-

The vornskr gave a low, cackling growl of warning from deep inside its chest. Its eyes caught the dim light in the cargo hold, reflecting it so that they seemed to glow with malevolent red-orange light. Its long, whip-like tail made a soft swooshing noise as wove back and forth in the air.

"Nice puppy." Shakrill – a huge, battle-scarred Trandoshan – bared his teeth as he leant forward, his face level with the vornskr's eyes.

Abruptly, the growling stopped. The vornskr launched itself directly at him.

Shakrill didn't so much as flinch. The vornskr slammed into the layer of force field between them and bounced off with a sharp crack. It howled in pain, then started pacing back and forth the length of its pen, tail weaving, growling and cackling like a revving engine. Shakrill burst out laughing. "Not so tough in there, are you puppy?"

"Shak, get away from there! Now!"

The big Trandoshan straightened and looked round. "I was just having a bit of fun, Rath. No harm in that." His hand came up involuntarily to rub at the side of his scaled red-brown face. There was a livid scar there where the vornskr's tail had lashed him when they were trying to capture it.

"We're not in this for fun. This is deadly serious."

Shakrill made a growling sound almost the match of the vornskr's. He stepped forward, at close to seven foot tall towering over Rath. "What makes your new pet so special anyway? To me it looks like nothing more than a kath hound with an attitude problem. What makes it worth all the trouble?"

Rath Gannaya didn't give an inch to the Trandoshan, meeting his gaze calmly despite the fact he was physically dwarfed. In his forties, he was no more than average height and build with neat black hair and a precisely razored beard. His clothing was of discreetly expensive cut, and gave him more the look of an Alderaanian noble at his leisure than the bounty hunter he was. "Vornskrs have one rather interesting property that makes them just about unique in the known galaxy. They hunt and track prey using the Force. Know what that means Shak?"

Shakrill sneered. "They can hunt and track Jedi? Thought it'd be something like that. You do know that isn't going work, don't you Rath?" The Trandoshan mimed a chopping motion, accompanied by a swooshing noise. "Dead vornskr in two pieces."

Rath gave a snorting laugh. "Maybe so, Shak. But the vornskr was just an added bonus. A curiosity if you will. Our trip to Myrkr was nothing to do with capturing us a vornskr."

Incredulity showed in Shakrill's reptilian eyes. His voice was a rasping growl. "You mean to say I went through all that trouble for nothing? So what was the point of Myrkr then, you damned Bantha-lover? A nice vacation?"

"Hardly."

"So what did we gain from it?" Shakrill bared his teeth, though Rath didn't seem the slightest bit intimidated. "One new pet dog and a bunch of weird little salamander creatures? You thinking of getting out of the bounty hunting business and starting up a zoo?" Abruptly the Trandoshan's eyes widened. "You don't mean those itty-bitty salamander things . . .?"

"Yes, Shak. Those 'itty-bitty salamander things'. You'd be amazed by what they can do." Something his late, unlamented father had been good for; who'd have thought. Rath turned away abruptly, touching his earpiece. "Kreed, how soon till we reach Taris?"

Shakrill stared after him angrily. The vornskr kept on prowling back and forth.

-s-s-

The cramped confines of the Defels' skyrunner did not allow for much in the way of privacy or comfort. Tamar stretched in the pilot's seat, feeling several of his vertebrae crack and pop. They were still in hyperspace, and would be for at least another couple of hours until they reached the Sith Outpost of Khar Dobra. Yuthura had a contact there she hoped she could use to get in touch with Auza's people, to arrange safe passage through Dantalus's defences.

Stifling a yawn, he glanced back over his shoulder.

Yuthura was in the middle of changing, transforming herself back into a high ranking Sith – apprentice to the Dark Lord himself. Her back was to him, and the back of her jumpsuit was unzipped. Tamar couldn't help but stop and stare.

The flesh of her shoulders was immaculately smooth pale violet, patterned with delicate intertwining lines of tattoos that marked her as both trained dancer and property. That wasn't what caught his eyes though. Below the midpoint of her back her skin was marred by a mass of vicious looking scars – weals on top of weals and cuts on top of cuts – long healed into an intricate relief-map of old pain and suffering.

Seemingly sensing the scrutiny, she glanced over her shoulder, catching both his look and its meaning. "They're from a shock lash," she told him quietly and matter-of-factly. "My owner, Omeesh, liked to watch his slaves being flogged. His Weequay guards were certainly . . . enthusiastic enough in their obedience of his orders. I was fortunate compared to some. My scars are where they can easily be hidden. I think Omeesh preferred not to mar the aesthetics of his pleasure slaves." She drew the zip closed and turned entirely round to face him.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to . . ."

"Don't be silly Tamar. It was a long time ago." Her attempt at a smile didn't quite come off.

"Would it help to talk, or would you prefer me to shut the hell up?" he asked her.

She didn't answer right away, in the midst of attaching lightweight armour plates over the top of the skin-tight, glossy black material of the jumpsuit – light enough that they wouldn't impede either her saber fighting or Force usage, but sufficiently sturdy to provide a degree of protection against blaster fire. Finally, she said: "It never hurts to talk, I think, even about the difficult things."

The answer surprised Tamar.

"Perhaps if I had realised that earlier, instead of bottling it all in . . .." She drew what looked rather like an armour-plated girdle tight around her waist. "But my thoughts and emotions where the only things that ever truly belonged to me, and I had learnt well the need to keep them hidden deep inside – precious jewels guarded by a miser's hand. I nurtured all my anger and hate away from the sight of my Jedi teachers, until eventually . . .. Well you know eventually well enough, don't you?"

She turned away, changing her headpiece for a more decorative and intricately designed one. He watched as she deftly wove what looked a bit like trailing strands of black ribbon in criss-cross patterns around her head tails.

"What happened, for Omeesh to punish you so severely?"

Yuthura shook her head. Her back was to him still "It didn't work like that. Omeesh was a sadist, and there was no logic or pattern to his sadism – no list of rules and transgressions you could use to keep yourself safe by. If there had been he would have been survivable – even bearable perhaps." She turned back to face him. "How do I look?"

Her face was made up to emphasise the paleness and starkness of the angles, her lips glossed black, making her teeth appear whiter and sharper than ever. With her skin-tight black jumpsuit and the strategically placed, gleaming black armour plates she looked strikingly lean and deadly, and . . . "Beautiful," he suggested.

He felt a flash of surprise from her. Very briefly, her face showed a mixture of both pleasure and embarrassment, before it quickly smoothed over to impassivity again. "My meaning was more as to whether you thought I would convince as apprentice to the Dark Lord?"

"I have complete confidence in you," he said, utterly serious.

"Thank you." Yuthura slid lithely into the co-pilot's seat next to him, briefly looking at his face with an expression that he found impossible to read. Her quiescent head tails, draped carefully over her shoulders, gave no further hint to her feelings. "That means a lot."

She looked out of the cockpit window, gazing off into the blankness of hyperspace. Eventually she resumed talking. "I'm still not sure if I was one of the lucky ones, or the opposite. I was one of Omeesh's favourites – he was appreciative of my skills as a dancer. That meant I lived long enough to see all of my friends die, and learn well the folly of making any new ones. I suppose that even then I was being tutored in how to be a Sith."

Tamar didn't say anything, but he could feel a definite stirring of cold, un-Jedi-like anger that was difficult to suppress.

"He liked to break people down," she continued quietly, eyes distant. "Omeesh wasn't content simply to own your flesh; he had to own your spirit too. His punishments were random and brutal. One day you would do something one way and he would reward you. The next, the very same action would earn you a flogging, or a beating, or a trip to the chastisement chambers. You couldn't avoid it – anything real or imagined might draw his ire. Some days you were punished simply because he hadn't punished you in a while.

"Making people grovel and humiliate themselves, and beg him for more punishment was one of his favourite things. He liked to make you to participate in your own degradation, and if you didn't amuse him enough that way, then he found other ways for you to amuse him – by feeding you to one of his pets, or . . ." her voice broke just fractionally, almost but not quite unnoticeable. ". . . or shipping you off to become arena fodder.

"One time he ordered me to dance for him. I had learned well enough that when you danced for Omeesh, you didn't stop until you were ordered to. Another dancer – Seela Vek her name was – had had her lekku amputated for that particular sin." A shudder passed through Yuthura's shoulders at that particular memory. "He never gave the order for me to stop. I danced for him for hours and hours, through the point of exhaustion and beyond, until my feet bled and every joint was agony. Eventually, I collapsed unconscious before my heart gave out. I must have amused him, because I was only flogged lightly afterwards. By Omeesh's standards it was almost affectionate."

As he listened, Tamar got the sense he was being told things she had never told anyone – that despite the matter-of-factness of tone she was digging a deep well of pain. He wanted to offer comfort, but wasn't sure how. "But you survived. You were strong, and came through everything he did to you. He never broke you."

She sighed softly to herself, and then shook her head. "I used to think that too. I used to pride myself on that, in fact – that I took all that Omeesh the Hutt could throw at me and was the one to walk away, more powerful than he could ever dream of being. But I was wrong. He broke me just as surely as he broke all his slaves. I just broke differently to how he expected. I broke with jagged edges." Her tone became grim. "Perhaps that was a comfort to him when I drove my stolen vibroblade into his corpulent flesh and sawed his throat open."

He could sense turmoil in her, ghosts of old anger mixing in with guilt and shame and other emotions he could not recognise. "There is peace," she murmured, all but inaudible. The turmoil slowly faded to something approaching calm acceptance.

After a brief hesitation he reached out and laid his hand over hers – slender-fingered and strong, nails sharper and thicker than those of a human; delicately manicured claws. She looked at him in surprise for a moment, then twined her fingers with his.

"There is peace," she echoed more firmly.

The words stabbed him with piercing guilt, for all he knew there had been exactly the opposite intent. "I am sorry to be so selfish. To ask you to do this so soon after . . .. If it is too difficult . . ."

"I'm not worried about it being too difficult for me, Tamar," she interrupted him, staring off into space. "Quite the contrary. I'm more concerned that I will find it far, far too easy."

-s-s-

The seething mass of black storm clouds turned everything as dark as midnight, even though in reality it was almost noon. Taris knew only endless nighttime now, the sky above the clouds never so much as glimpsed. Only lightning provided any hint of illumination, though the lightning came frequently enough.

Juhani pulled the hood of her of Jedi robe in tighter against the icy edge of the howling wind. Tainted grey snow fell in dirty flurries. Hers and Zaalbar's fur provided a degree of protection against its poisonous, acidic bite, though Mission had not fared so well, the twi'lek girl's head tails getting burnt and blistered on the one occasion she'd made the mistake of venturing out without adequate protection.

Here you definitely didn't want to play at catching snowflakes on your tongue.

She walked through endless fields of rubble and wreckage, striding hard, leaning forward slightly to brace herself against the wind's intensifying fury. A good job she was relatively close to base camp, she reflected. In about half an hour conditions were likely going to turn exceedingly nasty indeed.

To her left stood a broken shard of shattered skyscraper, leaning at a precarious angle but still soaring several hundred feet above the surrounding rubble – a familiar landmark to guide her path. Once it had been part of a building that would almost have rivalled the skyscrapers of Coruscant. Now though . . ..

A weary, pained shake of her head. To think that she had once thought she despised this place – the bigotry and xenophobia; the grinding intolerance and inequality. Looking at it now, even after being back for over three months, all she could feel was bone deep sorrow. Home was home, however pitiful, and she had come to learn that sometimes it was possibly to weep for even your bitterest enemy.

Perhaps now, she thought, she understood some of what Tamar felt for Malak – his pain and regret that it couldn't have worked out differently.

As she turned a blind corner, the Force gave her just enough warning to draw the pair of lightsabers she carried and ignite them, their blades shining brilliant blue in the gloom. The wind whipped her robes hard around her body.

Rakghouls of course. Juhani knew that before she saw, or even heard them. On Taris, it was always Rakghouls. Scorching the planet seemed to have done little in the way of reducing their numbers. In fact, now they were pretty much the only life left – the sort of vermin that found a way to prosper, no matter what.

A pack of half a dozen of them descended on her, bounding over the wreckage from ever direction.

The Force flowed through all life, and all life formed part of the Force, precious in its own way. Juhani struggled to see that in Rakghouls, though. She struggled to see anything beyond the utterly vile. Perhaps it was because they were a disease, other lifeforms – humans; Twi'leks; perhaps even Cathar like herself – warped and parasitized by ravenous, mutating infection.

She span, neon blue blades forming a whirlwind of humming energy, slicing through greasy, putrid grey flesh as one of the Rakghouls lunged at her. It fell back, howling in pain and fury.

Then, before she could be overwhelmed, she drew upon the Force, using it to augment her leg muscles and launch herself, somersaulting backwards over the Rakghouls heads. She landed on high ground, atop a miniature mountain of debris, forcing them to come up at her from one side rather than every angle at once. They snarled and howled at her angrily.

As they came at her, she hurled her shorter bladed off-hand lightsaber, slicing straight through the front two and putting them down in an instant. The third– the one she'd already wounded – flung itself at her bodily, jaws snapping at her throat. She met it halfway with a fast right-to-left slash that severed it in two through the thorax.

Both blades where back in her hands.

The three remaining Rakghouls came up short, circling her warily, spreading out as though to flank her. Juhani wasn't sure if they'd always been like that, but of late, the things had been showing disturbing signs of learning – of acquiring tactics – instead of being simply the mindless, unsophisticated monsters that everybody thought them.

One of them darted forward. A feint, the Force told her, and she span, meeting the real lunge that would have ripped out her hamstrings if she'd bought it. Her off-hand sabre pierced the side of the attacking Rakghoul's skull, and it collapsed – dead weight – whatever it had for brains well and truly fried.

The remaining two tried to take her simultaneously in a pincer movement, but she was ready for them. A few spinning saber slashes later, she was the only one still standing. As corpses, the Rakghouls looked – and stank – even worse than when alive.

Ten minutes later, both lightsabers still held ready, though no further trouble encountered, she made it back to base camp. A large area of rubble had been cleared and compacted to form a broad landing pad. The familiar lines of the Ebon Hawk sat less than a hundred yards away, between a pair of Republic supply freighters. Beyond the landing pad, a row of low pre-fabricated temporary structures had been set up to act as living and operational quarters.

"More Rakghouls?" Zaalbar greeted her with a mournful sounding growl. The towering Wookiee had his bowcaster at the ready as he stood, illuminated by the fierce blue-white glow of an arc lamp. She could see the ornate hilt of Bacca's ceremonial blade rising above his shoulder. Immediately, and with not a small amount of disquiet, she realised that he was waiting specifically for her return.

"When is it ever anything else?" she asked him rhetorically.

"How is it there can be so many of them? We must have slain thousands of the beasts already, yet still there are always more – an endless tide. Where do they all come from?"

Juhani got the distinct impression that Zaalbar's question was equally as rhetorical as her own was, and he would be surprised to get an answer. They fell into stride together.

"I still don't understand why you walk out there alone." A noise, somewhere between rasping sigh and a moan. "This is not the place for a Wookiee. There is no life left here, only ashes."

It was only at this point she realised they were walking towards the Ebon Hawk rather than the living quarters. "Zaalbar?" she asked him questioningly.

"It is Mission. She wants to speak to us. She is . . ." Zaalbar seemed to be struggling for an appropriate explanation. "You will see what she is soon enough I think."

Mission was waiting for them at the top of the Ebon Hawk's boarding ramp, tapping her foot impatiently. "Finally! I was beginning to think I was going to have to send out a search party."

Juhani would have been able to sense her agitation even without the constant giveaway twitching of the young Twi'lek's headtails. "What is wrong, Mission? What happened?"

"You haven't seen the holoNet? No, of course not, you've been out walking all . . ." She glanced at her chrono. ". . . Morning. Revan – I mean Tamar – has escaped! It's been on all the stations. Somebody busted him out of prison! It was Carth and Jolee and HK and the others. I just know it. It has to be them. Nothing else makes any sense. I let you talk me into staying before, Juhani, but not this time. Uh-huh. We have to help them. They need us. They need the Hawk. We're going and that's that, absolutely right now."

Juhani's brow furrowed as she struggled to keep up. "Slow down. Tamar has been broken out of prison?" The implications of that were even more difficult to take in than Mission's tumbling stream of words.

Mission threw up her hands. "Yes! Aren't you listening to me? Has everyone round this dump turned into a hopeless nerf-herder while I wasn't looking?"

"See what I mean?" Zaalbar interjected with what for him amounted to a whisper.

"Hey big Z! I thought you were on my side."

"There are no sides here." Juhani stated emphatically as she started up the Ebon Hawk's ramp. "Now try to calm down Mission, and explain to me everything that has happened."

There as an exasperated sigh, which said: that's what I've been trying to tell you. She started again, slightly more slowly this time.

". . . And pretty much the entire fleet are on high alert. The price they've put on his head will have every single bounty hunter in the galaxy drooling at the prospect. So you see, we have to help them," she finally finished, a look of frantic appeal on her face.

"And how exactly are we going to do that, Mission?" Juhani asked, gently but firmly.

"Well . . . Er, I haven't quite worked that out yet." She stuck her chin out defiantly. "But I will do. They'll need the Hawk. I know they will. We can't just sit here!"

Juhani struggled to sort through her own feelings. Part of her wanted to berate Revan – berate Tamar – how could you be so stupid? This . . . this just makes you look guilty. What were you thinking? What have you done? But another part was dangerously in accord with Mission, ready to forget her current duties and charge off right there and then. She had thought she'd finally gotten control of her rashness and her quickness of temper, but obviously not quite as well as she'd let herself believe.

She spoke firmly, with an emphaticness and authority she didn't really feel. "We can't just up and leave. We came to Taris for a purpose, and you agreed with that purpose too, Mission. You asked to come along with us. A Jedi does not just throw down her duty because something personal has come up."

Mission had her hands on her hips. "In case you hadn't noticed, but hey, I'm not a Jedi. None of that 'There is no fun, there is tedium. There is no action, there is sitting around yapping' crap for me, thanks. I'm not having it."

Juhani had difficulty hiding a smile that was probably entirely inappropriate at hearing the Jedi code so casually and thoroughly dismissed. "Mission, if we just charge off blindly we're likely to do as much harm as good. People know the Hawk and Tamar's connection to it. We could just end up leading people to him, even if we do manage to find him somehow." She shook her head. "Maybe the best thing he can do right now is surrender."

"You can't be serious!" Mission's face twisted in an angry scowl. "You think he's guilty, don't you?"

There was a tiny but fatal hesitation. "No . . . no, of course not."

"I don't believe this! How . . . how could you, Juhani? After all that he's done for us. For you. I know what happened. How he saved you from the dark side. How could you even doubt him for a moment? Tell her Big Z!"

"She is right, Mission."

"Wha . . .?" Confusion and betrayal showed on Mission's face.

"I owe him a life debt, and I won't forget that. I am nothing if I do. But Juhani is right. Charging off without a plan is worse than doing nothing at all."

Juhani stepped in quickly, trying to appear firm and resolute. "Listen, both of you. This is what is going to happen. Now, I don't believe for a moment that Tamar played any intentional part in the murder of the Jedi Council, but we still have an obligation to this mission. And we will fulfil it." She held up a hand to forestall Mission's protest. "From this survey point there are perhaps three days worth of sites we still have to investigate for any possible survivors."

"All we'll find is Rakghouls. That's all we ever find. There hasn't been a single survivor located on the whole of Taris for months."

"Mission, don't interrupt. As long as there is any chance of finding anyone else, no matter how minute, none of us are going to give up. Am I clear? Good. So, during these next few days, we will all do our job thoroughly and attentively, but we will also come up with a definite plan of action. After the work at this survey point is done, provided we are agreed, we will make our apologies to Major Ackbar and we won't move on with the rest of the team to the next site. Instead, we'll leave Taris and start looking to help Tamar in whatever manner we are best able to."

Juhani looked from Mission to Zaalbar and back again. "Are we agreed?"

Mission finally nodded unhappily, head tails drooping. "Yeah, we're agreed."

-s-s-

Yuthura's boot heels clicked a staccato rhythm as she strode rapidly across the docking bay of Kinrae spaceport, the tails of her long black coat streaming out behind her until they almost resembled batwings. The look of tightly controlled fury on her face was enough to send all but the bravest or most foolhardy scurrying immediately for cover. The lightsaber displayed openly at her hip would take care of the rest.

A couple of paces behind her, Mandalorian armour gleaming to a mirror-finished sheen, Tamar was a huge, silently looming shadow. A Baragwin assault blade, specially modified by Suvam Tan, was strapped across his back, while a heavy Baragwin repeater was held in readiness across his chest.

Standing waiting for them was a rather worried looking Sith officer flanked by half a dozen Sith troops. As they got nearer, the Sith officer stepped forward to either greet or challenge them.

Yuthura didn't give him the opportunity. "Why is there no honour guard awaiting my arrival?" she demanded the moment he opened his mouth to say something.

His jaw shut with an audible click. The look in his eyes as he took in her appearance and scowl suggested he would suddenly much rather be in the local cantina – approximately anywhere rather than right here, right now. "You are the owner of the . . ." he glanced quickly at the datapad he was holding. "Ajunta's Blade? We don't appear to have any record . . ."

"Yes, cretin," she snapped, looking at him in a manner that suggested he was something unpleasant that she'd just trodden in. "The Ajunta's Blade is my ship. And I want to know why there was no one here to meet me. Is Governor Tetrell deliberately trying to insult me, or does he simply employ incompetents?"

"Um . . . perhaps if you could tell me your name, Ma'am? I might be able to sort something out . . ."

Yuthura made a hissing noise that had the unfortunate man flinching back from her. "This is beyond belief. What is your name and rank, officer?"

"Ensign Mascis, ma'am." He managed not to stammer, which was the precise limit of his composure.

"Well Ensign, be grateful that I am in a good mood, and less predisposed to random acts of violence than my predecessor. I am Darth Ban. Perhaps you've heard of me, hmm? Yes? I am here to see Governor Tetrell." She spoke as if talking to a simpleton.

"D-Darth . . ."

"Ban. Would you like me to spell it for you?"

"Um, that won't be necessary. And your travelling companion my, er . . . Lord? For our manifests." He appeared to be willing himself to vanish down a crack in the plastocrete.

She blinked, yellow eyes boring into him. "My travelling companion? What are you blathering about? I am travelling alone."

"Um, but . . . my Lord." He nodded towards Tamar, hulking silently and impassively over her shoulder.

"What part of alone is giving you trouble, Ensign? There is nobody with me."

"The, er . . . Mandalorian behind you," he said with a slightly desperate note in his voice.

Yuthura looked at him incredulously, as if she couldn't believe the stupidity of what she'd just heard. "That is my property, Ensign. Like a droid or a suitcase, if it helps you to comprehend. As I have told you twice already, I am travelling alone."

Ensign Mascis gave up. "Very good, my Lord. Should I send word ahead to Governor Tetrell and arrange transportation . . .?"

"Don't concern yourself about it, I can find my own way, thank you." Dismissing him from her notice, she snapped her fingers at four of the on looking Sith guards in turn. "You, you, you and you. You will escort me to the Governor's offices. Now."

As she strode peremptorily past them, no one had the nerve to say anything, let alone object.

-s-s-

"It is done" Ygress gave a high-pitched warble, his abbreviated left antenna twitching spasmodically as he spoke.

Rath peered past the slender, insectoid Verpine. Beyond him, in the middle of the cargo bay, stood a huge, heavily armoured battlefield droid with what look like a cylindrical metal tank grafted into its chest.

"The ysalmari and its branch fit inside the armoured frontal tank. Environmental conditions are regulated to suit the creature perfectly, and it is shielded against even heavy blaster fire. It has little negative effect on the droid's performance. I have constructed four of them as ordered"

Rath patted the Verpine's hard, chitinous shoulder. "You've done brilliantly. As always." From behind him came a muttered snort. Rath turned around. "You don't seem that impressed, Kreed?"

"This doesn't seem like overkill to you, Rath? For a single Jedi, I mean. I've faced Jedi before, many times. In my experience they die just like anybody else." Kreed was a Mandalorian, or at least the bits of him that were still human were. At some point, he'd lost both legs and his left arm. They'd been replaced with cybernetic limbs. One eye was missing too, a glowing red lens fitted in its socket. Rath knew that he had enough weaponry built into himself to fight – and win – a small war.

"Think of it as a trial run. Proof of tactics. You're the one who's been spouting all these paeans to Revan's greatness and invincibility. I thought you above any of us would appreciate the chance to iron out any operational kinks before we go up against him."

Kreed snorted. "There's no honour in using thermal detonators to exterminate krith rats."

"This is about money. Not honour. Get that idea out of your head right now."

"Right." The contempt in the Mandalorian's voice dripped.

"Besides, this Jedi – they say she fought at Revan's side when he took down Darth Malak on the Star Forge. And she's a Cathar. You know very well their reputation as fighters."

"We've been through this before, Rath," Shakrill interrupted with a growl, the big Trandoshan stepping forward from the corner where he'd been lurking. "We all know the plan."

"Then perhaps we'd like to go over it one more time." Rath smiled. "You know, for luck."

Shakrill bared his teeth.

"Humour me." This time Rath's voice was hard – authoritative.

It was Kreed who answered. "We lure them away from the landing pad with a faked distress call. Me, Shak, the brothers and the four battle droids lay in ambush for them. We take out the Cathar, the Wookiee, and any Republic troops accompanying them. While we're doing this, you, Ygress and the others come in and grab the Ebon Hawk. Satisfied, Rath? We've done this before. We're actually pretty damn good at it. It's not quantum physics."

"And the Twi'lek?" Rath pressed.

"We try to take her alive, if at all possible, to use against Revan as a hostage." The Mandalorian snorted dismissively. "I think we're capable of dealing with a fifteen year-old Twi'lek girl easily enough, Rath. Don't you?"

-s-s-

"Do you have an appointment?" the receptionist asked with a brittle, artificial smile.

"I have deigned to make time in my schedule to see Governor Tetrell, yes." Yuthura smiled back. Something about the expression made the receptionist blanch.

"Wait, you can't just go . . ."

But Yuthura was already striding past, through the doors behind the reception desk. ". . . in there." The receptionist trailed off lamely, there no longer being anyone to talk to.

The Governor was standing with his back to the door, dictating into a head set as he gazed out of the window that made up one wall of his office. The view it gave was spectacular, overlooking a small mist shrouded valley beyond Kinrae spaceport's walls. He turned around casually at the intrusion, only a slight flicker carried on the Force giving any hint that he was surprised at being disturbed.

"Yuthura," he said after a miniscule, but telling pause. "It has been a long time."

She didn't say anything; just looked at him. The door whispered closed behind Tamar's armoured back. Governor Tetrell was somewhere in his thirties, handsome in a chilly sort of way, with a thin, ascetic face that would always look slightly cruel whatever reality lay behind it.

"It was stupid of you to come here, Yuthura – a wanted traitor. I won't take any pleasure from turning you in, but I think counting the credits of the reward will help me sleep at night."

She still didn't say anything. Instead, she reached out with the Force and yanked his legs out from under him. As he hit the carpet with a thud and muffled grunt she strode forward, planting a boot heel firmly across his throat.

"Yuthura," he gasped, barely able to draw breath. "There is . . . an entire legion of troops . . . in the vicinity. All I have to do is snap my fingers . . ."

She simply peered down at him, tilting her head fractionally to one side, the look in her eyes suggesting she was examining something interesting but vaguely unpleasant in a sample dish. "Canderous, I seem to have trodden in something. I was wondering if you had any idea what it was?"

Tamar, just having finished disabling the security alarm beneath the Governor's desk, made a show of stepping forwards. He peered down at the Governor through the eye slits in his helmet. "Looks like carrion to me," he rasped.

"Yes it does, doesn't it?" She drew her lightsaber, holding it so that if she where to ignite it, its blade would impale Governor Tetrell straight through the face.

"Yuthura, you didn't come here just to kill me . . .." There was a hint of desperation now. He was struggling to breathe because of the pressure of her boot. "I heard that you'd returned to the Jedi . . ."

"I prefer Darth Ban now."

"Darth Ban . . ." He blinked, and it was almost possible to see the workings of his thoughts behind his eyes as he reinterpreted all the rumours and snippets of information he'd heard over the past few days. Suddenly he blanched.

"Yes, I chose to follow the path of the true Lord of the Sith. Not the petty pretenders to his crown." She smiled – bared her teeth – and slightly eased up the pressure on his throat. "I have grown more powerful than you could possibly imagine."

"What do you want from me?" Governor Tetrell managed to seem very nearly calm, despite the fact he was still lying on his back beneath her. He always had been adaptable, she recalled. "I am humbly at your service."

"You're going to make a call to Darth . . ." Stepping back from him she sneered as she pronounced the title, head tails weaving contemptuously. "Auza. He and I are due a chat."

Tetrell gingerly got back to his feet. "What makes you think . . .?"

"Oh, I know you aren't particularly close to Auza," she interrupted him. "But you are allied with him. Part of his court, if only a very peripheral member, and he will take your call if you say it's important. That's all I ask."

"He is not going to be at all pleased if I . . ."

"As an alternative, I'm sure your 'entire legion of troops' will be able to clean up the mess they find when they get here most efficiently."

He grimaced. "I'll need some time."

Yuthura inclined her head. "Why certainly. You know that I've never been an unreasonable person. I'll give you two minutes."

"But . . ."

"You can call him from your desk right now. You do not lose all your brain cells when you gain the title Darth, Governor. I'm still capable of thinking on a somewhat worldly level." She smiled again, cold and sharp and scary. "Now, have you recovered from your memory lapse, or do I have to ask Canderous here to give it a jog?"

"No, no," he hastened, spreading his hands placatingly, then walking behind his desk. "I will . . . see what I can do."

"Gooood." Yuthura drew the word out into a teasingly. "Now, inform Darth Auza that my master has a proposition he wishes me to discuss with him, face to face. A proposition that – if we are calm and adult about it – shall be of great benefit to us all." With deliberate, languid grace, she seated herself opposite the Governor and leant forward, across the desk. "And Governor Tetrell? You can stop pressing the alarm call now. I think it might be broken."

-s-s-

"Fifty yards from this point, around the turn," Zaalbar growled and gestured ahead.

What had once been the undercity of Taris now stood open to the sky – a maze of deep, fragmentary canyons walled by rubble, scotched plastocrete, and warped and twisted metal. It was just barely above freezing point down here, so the filthy, tainted snow melted and ran in poisonous icy cold streams down the canyon walls. The sound of dripping was a constant, maddening accompaniment.

Juhani nodded acknowledgement. Her lightsabers were in hand but not yet ignited. Tension pricked at her. Something she couldn't put her finger on felt . . . wrong.

"There're definitely life signs up ahead. A high concentration of them. Impossible to tell if it's just more Rakghouls or not," Sergeant Horan, a veteran Republic soldier informed her.

"If we just stand here yapping, Rakghouls are all that's gonna be left." Impatience filled Mission's voice. "You heard the distress call, Juhani."

If they aren't all dead already. The distress call they'd received twenty minutes earlier had been brief and garbled – a frantic voice speaking galactic basic, and a beacon broadcasting their position. All attempts at raising them again had come up blank, though the beacon was still functioning. There had been a brief hope in her that it might prove to be more survivors from the bombardment, but she knew privately that it was much more likely to be off-world scavengers, looking for loot in this endless city of the dead. Part of her struggled not to make moral judgments, and convince herself that they were just as worth saving as everybody else

"Let's move in carefully, Sergeant," Juhani gave the order.

She still didn't feel entirely comfortable with military command, unable to stop herself privately second guessing every decision that she made; worrying constantly that she was letting her emotions intrude too much, or she was missing some vital detail or other. How other people made it look so effortless she couldn't begin to fathom. It felt as if it was going to turn her fur prematurely grey.

At that moment, the sound of a sporadic burst of blaster fire made the whole decision a lot more clear-cut.

Ahead of them, the twisting canyon opened up into a strange plaza made up of twisted columns that had once been the anchoring roots of vast skyscrapers. The ground was scarred and blasted, and every few tens of metres huge pits opened up, dropping away into fathomless darkness.

The blaster fire came from the plaza's far side; bright intermittent flashes. In the brief instants of illumination it provided she could make out hunched, grey-skinned, loping forms.

The Republic troops fanned out, laying down covering fire, all of them expertly trained veterans of the Sith wars. It was some comfort to Juhani, as she ignited her lightsabers, that they were fully capable of doing exactly the right thing, whatever the competence of her command.

From beside her Zaalbar's bowcaster spat green energy bolts with its distinctive whine-crack note. As she concentrated, she was dimly aware of Mission fading into little more than an ephemeral blur as her stealth field generator kicked in. Only fifteen the Twi'lek might have been, but she was as handy a fighter as any of them, more experienced and skilled than most people twice her age.

The Rakghouls tried to turn and face their new attackers, howling out their rage. Against such well-armed and highly trained opponents it was over quickly though. Less than a minute later, everything was still and quiet, nearly a score of smoking grey-skinned corpses scattered across the ground.

There was no immediate sign of anyone else.

"Is there anybody out there?" Juhani called, extinguishing her glowing blue lightsaber blades. Her voice echoed disconcertingly. All she could hear was the constant dripping and running water. "You sent a distress call. We're here to help you."

No answer.

One of the republic soldiers took a step forward. Blaster fire spat, and he went down with a strangled yelp, struck in the leg.

"Please," Juhani called out. "We're not your enemies."

Again, no hint of a response.

One of the fallen soldier's comrades tried to move towards him, but another blaster shot spat out. This time it missed by inches, striking the ground at his feet and causing him to scramble backwards with a strangled yelp.

"Automated gun turret," Zaalbar indicated with a growl. "Four o'clock."

"If anyone can hear me, switch off your turret." Juhani tried to reach out with the Force to locate any living minds in the vicinity, but she couldn't feel anything except her companions. She wasn't sure if that meant there wasn't anyone out there, or if her companions' proximity was simply drowning everything else out. "I repeat, we're here to help! The Rakghouls are dead!"

Her words echoed, unanswered. The fallen soldier let out a stifled groan of pain, but knew enough not to attempt to move from where he lay.

Mission rematerialised, seemingly from thin air beside her. "No sign of anyone," she reported. "I . . . I think we were to late. Whoever they were, they're probably all dead."

Juhani stifled a sigh, not able to disagree with the assessment. She eyed the turret carefully, plotting an approach route in her head. Taking a deep breath, she drew on the Force, using it to enhance her muscle power and reduce the level of air resistance around her. Then she ignited her lightsabers again and started moving, almost too fast for the eye to follow.

Her lightsaber blades intercepted several incoming shots, deflecting them away. Others missed her rapidly moving form, raising splinters of shrapnel from the ground in her wake. Then she was alongside the turret, still unscathed.

A swift, surgical saber stroke and it died amid a squall of static and the reek of fried electrics. She signalled the all clear to the others.

Zaalbar was the first to come alongside her. "What's that?" he indicated something attached to the foot of the dead turret by a length of chain.

On closer inspection, it turned out to a hefty lump of raw, putrefying meat. It stank, utterly vile. Up until then Juhani had dismissed the foul miasma it was giving off as coming from the dead rakghouls. Now she had to pause to stop herself gagging.

Why the hell would someone chain raw meat to a gun turret?

It struck her suddenly. To persuade a group of Rakghouls to attack the turret, and make it look like a pitched battle was taking place. Which meant . . .

A trap.

She was just starting to shout a warning to the others when she went completely blind.

-s-s-

"It is funny how everyone seems to completely lose the power of rational thought when you mention the name Revan," Yuthura commented dryly.

Tamar guided the skyrunner – for now called the Ajunta's Blade – down towards the landing pad of Auza's palace. The roiling walls of dark cloud that surrounded the Eye of Simus flashed with red lightning, but overhead the sky was a calmly pristine shade of azure. The contrast was somehow unsettling on some deep instinctual level.

"You didn't expect this to work," he stated as their spacecraft touched down gently. His voice was distorted slightly by his helmet.

"I . . . not so easily, no." There was a definite tension to her expression as she gazed out at the palace's delicately wrought spires. "I suppose that was always one of Revan's most powerful talents – to inspire awe in those who served him. Malak tried to copy it, I think, but he was too clumsy and all he could ever manage to inspire was fear."

He unsnapped his seat restraints. "Unfortunately it works against us too."

She didn't need to ask what he meant. Without the mythic weight of Revan's name hanging over them like an executioner's blade, perhaps the Republic wouldn't have been so easily convinced of their guilt over the Jedi Council's death. Perhaps they wouldn't be in this position – deep in Sith space with no support.

"Looks like we've got a welcoming committee," Tamar indicated with a nod, swinging himself out of the pilot's seat and standing up. "Two of them. They don't look armed, from here at least."

"You are going to see some very . . . unpleasant things out there," she warned as she followed him. "You can't react to them."

"What do you mean?"

"I explained to you why we couldn't bring T3 – about Auza's paranoia concerning droids."

Tamar chuckled, though there wasn't much humour to it. "Maybe he met HK at some point in the past."

There was something bleak and pained in her eyes. "Instead of droids he uses mind-wiped slaves as servitors and workers . . . and playthings. Some of it . . . it is vile. Last time I was here I had trouble restraining myself from cutting the Hutt-slime down."

"You'll be okay?" he asked quietly.

She took a deep breath and nodded. "I know what to expect. But you should be prepared."

He opened the exit hatch in the skyrunner's belly, lowered the steps, and climbed down, before stopping and standing rigidly at attention. After a slight pause, he heard Yuthura descending after him.

The welcoming party stepped forwards to greet them. Tamar was glad that the helmet was there to cover his surprise. Golden haired and glowing, the man and woman looked to be twins, specimens of flawless human beauty. They wore matching short white tunics that left their tanned, lithely muscular limbs bare.

Tamar didn't miss the lightsabers that each twin wore at their hip. They certainly didn't look like typical dark Jedi, however.

"Greetings . . ."

". . . my Lady."

Both twins bore matching smiles, the female twin starting the sentence and the male twin finishing it for her as they smilingly bowed to Yuthura.

"Welcome to the humble dwelling . . ."

". . . of the Great Darth Auza."

Again, one twin started the sentence and the other finished. Tamar found it rather unsettling, and he could feel the Force looping between the two of them in a manner that was completely different to anything he could ever remember sensing before.

"I trust that your journey . . ."

". . . was not too tiresome?"

"It was passable, thank you." Yuthura's voice held cool disdain. If the twins disturbed her in any way, it didn't show.

"I am . . ."

". . . glad."

"However I was given to understand . . ."

". . . you would be travelling alone."

"And so I am. Canderous here is merely my servitor. I'm sure that Lord Auza fully understands the concept."

The twins inclined their heads as one, perfectly synchronised in their movements, apparently content to let the matter rest. Tamar didn't miss how they referred to themselves using a singular pronoun. "Quarters have been . . ."

". . . prepared for you."

"Would you like . . ."

". . . to freshen up?"

"I would rather meet with Lord Auza as soon as possible," Yuthura answered. "The business I bring before him is of pressing urgency."

Again, the twins inclined their heads, almost a bow this time. For all their politeness, Tamar noted that they pointedly refused to use the title 'Darth Ban', which could potentially be construed as an insult – or at least a test. If Yuthura was to mention it in the face of their otherwise scrupulous politeness, it risked looking petty and insecure. On the other hand letting it slide entirely might seem like weakness.

"If you would . . ."

". . . follow me please."

"Darth Auza is . . ."

". . . currently dining."

"He would be most happy . . ."

". . . for you to join him."

"That would be . . . adequate." Yuthura gestured with both hand and head tail. "Please, lead the way."

The twins linked hands as they turned away from them. For some reason that tiny, innocent gesture, made Tamar's skin crawl. He could sense the intricate weaves of Force flowing between the two of them suddenly intensify.

The landing pad was effectively a floating island, connected to the rest of the palace by a gracefully arching bridge. Crossing it gave the slightly bizarre illusion that the fluffy white cloud tops of Dantalus VI's atmosphere formed a gently flowing river beneath them. One in which you could dive in and swim . . .

Delicate, gilded gates swung open soundlessly as they approached them, admitting them into the palace itself. They walked for many minutes, and the route they took seemed designed specifically to show off the palace's many and varied splendours to maximum advantage – lush, exotically landscaped gardens; sunlit galleries, gracefully pillared and filled with artwork from a dozen varied cultures; transparent floored walkways that gave the sensation of walking directly on the cloud tops.

Through it all Tamar didn't spot a single hint of a Sith uniform or an armed guard. All he saw were the slaves that Yuthura had warned him about.

Most he only glimpsed from a distance, elegant but listless looking humans and Twi'leks attired in similar manner to the twins, but wearing metal collars. A trio of lovely, violet-skinned Zeltrons, however, he passed at closer range. It was a struggle to hide his shock, and he was grateful that his helmet concealed his reaction.

They were utterly blank, whatever was left of their minds making less impression on the Force than the average insect. They seemed to have been reduced to the status of decorous biological sculptures.

He felt a flash of deep and profound anger from Yuthura, but outwardly, she didn't react at all. Then another set of gates were opening up before them and they had reached their destination.

-s-s-

At least, Juhani's initial feeling was that she'd gone blind.

She had never realised quite how much the Force had come to be such an integral part of her existence, until suddenly it was gone. One moment she was subliminally aware of everyone around her – Zaalbar, Mission, Sergeant Horan and the other Republic troops – the next, there was . . . nothing. In the initial instants, before her eyesight and hearing informed her otherwise, her mind was more willing to believe that somehow, they'd all just vanished rather than she'd somehow lost the ability to sense them.

Four titanic battle droids – similar in some respects to the latest Sith prototype models, but considerably larger and heavily modified – rose on repulsorlifts from the gaping black pits in the fractured ground they'd so blithely walked past moments earlier. Juhani strained hard to reach the Force, convinced that the failing must be in her somehow – that if she tried hard enough she could overcome it. The alternative seemed inconceivable.

She came up empty though. The battle droids opened fire indiscriminately.

Most of the Republic soldiers were still turning to face the threat when they were unceremoniously scythed down by a rapid crossfire of heavy blaster fire. Juhani saw Mission blink out of view as she activated her stealth unit, Zaalbar, Horan and several other survivors scrambling desperately for cover behind broken pillars.

A blaster bolt passed close enough by Juhani's face to scorch the fine covering of fur on her cheek. Suddenly she was scrambling for cover with the others, heart thudding, adrenaline coursing through her veins. Without being able to sense the blaster shots being fired through the Force, she couldn't even begin to parry them with her lightsabers. In fact, her lightsabers felt entirely useless in her grasp, liable to do more harm to herself than any opponent. Her breath came in short gasps as she struggled to fight off the disorienting panic that was trying to claim her.

A republic soldier shrieked as one of the battle droids bathed his scant cover in a mass of roiling flame, springing up and running frantically as he was transformed into a blazing human torch. The hail of blaster fire that halted his wildly erratic progress was almost a mercy.

Zaalbar bellowed as a blaster bolt hit him in the shoulder, but it took far more than a single blaster shot to drop an angry Wookiee. He responded with a volley of bolts from his bowcaster as on of the battle droids moved in on him, but the attacks bounced harmlessly off its energy shields. Growling deep in his chest, Zaalbar switched to Bacca's blade and charged in swinging.

As another of the droids closed in on her position, Juhani was aware of an assault sled rising from another of the pits, spilling in the region of half a dozen troops to back-up the attacking droids. Gritting her teeth, she forced herself to act, able to see all too clearly that if the odds didn't change dramatically they were going to be completely overwhelmed within seconds.

She rolled from cover, blaster fire chewing up the ground behind her and stinging her with shards of plastocrete shrapnel. Without thinking about it, she threw her off-hand saber at the attacking droid, aiming for its leg joints.

Except she couldn't use the Force to either propel it, or guide it back to her hand. The lightsaber's blue blade struck the droid almost where she'd aimed, but it just bounced off its shields with a harsh cracking sound and tumbled the floor, extinguishing as one of its crystals jarred out of alignment.

Pain exploded in her thigh as a blaster shot hit her. Her leg buckled beneath her, sending her sprawling. Gritting her teeth as searing agony flared through her, she forced herself to roll, staying just fractionally ahead of several more blaster shots designed to finish her off. She just about managed to avoid impaling herself on her remaining lightsaber as she did so.

She came up alongside the droid, half-snarling and half crying-out as she swung her lightsaber. This time she managed to penetrate the shields, the lightsaber blade cutting into the metal of its leg. Before she could tell what damage she'd inflicted, a flailing metal arm, solid as a steel girder, struck her in the side of the head and sent her sprawling.

Blackness sucked at her. The sound of roaring blood in her ears drowned out even the cacophony of the nearby battle. Only raw determination kept her from sliding into unconsciousness. Another blaster shot clipped her side, spinning her over, but she scarcely noticed, hauling herself back to her feet through sheer bloody-minded willpower.

It was only when yet another blaster shot fractured the ground between her feet that she realised she was teetering dangerously close to one of the pits. Abruptly there was a sharp cracking, splintering noise and the ground beneath her was gone.

She was too surprised to even cry out, tumbling silently into blackness.

-s-s-

Darth Auza – Auza the Hutt.

Tamar looked at the huge, corpulent figure sprawled on his red velvet and gold throne, and tried to hide his distaste. The mass off clear tubes connecting into the Sith Lord's flesh gurgled softly as they drained and fed fluid into and out of his vast bulk. Standing next to him, proffering various trays of foodstuffs at Auza's indication, was a collared Twi'lek slave. Her mind was every bit as blank and empty as the Zeltrons. She was violet skinned, the same racial grouping as Yuthura, and though she was somewhat softer and fuller looking than her, the intended message – and insult – was clear enough.

"Yuthura," Auza exclaimed between devouring small pink, crustacean-like foodstuffs. "You're looking . . . particularly svelte and deadly. It's been what? Two years?"

"Nearer two and a half," she answered, frowning.

"It seems less. Truly it does." He made a gesture with his free hand, and in that moment looked exactly like the Hutt he was nicknamed for. "Please take a seat." He indicated a pair of chairs arranged in front of him. "Your big . . . Mandalorian friend too."

"Canderous can stand," she said dryly as she arranged herself in one of the chairs. "One doesn't let the kath hounds on the furniture, does one?"

Auza let out a vile, burbling chuckle. "Indeed one does not." He was looking at Tamar with an intense, disconcerting curiosity. "Interesting. Canderous, you say . . .? How . . . curious." He started to frown.

Yuthura tapped a gleaming black jewel set in the front of her headpiece at the centre of her forehead, her lips twisting wryly. "I like to be sure I hold a proper degree of control over my . . . servants. I'm sure you know what I mean, Lord Auza." The last two words contained a subtly ironic twist.

Finally, Auza dragged his dark, malevolent eyes away from Tamar, his curiosity apparently satisfied. "Of course." He gave a ghastly looking smile. "Are you hungry after your flight, Yuthura? You must be. I'll have Celyanda fetch you something."

"Celyanda?"

Auza indicated the twins.

"Thank you for the kind offer, but I'd sooner we got down to business."

"Business. Yes, yes. I suppose we must." Auza sighed wistfully. "Sometimes I can't help but think we Sith have our priorities slightly skewed. What purpose this constant striving for power if we can't stop from time to time to simply enjoy it?"

"But there is always more power to be had, just within reach. And it always so very tempting."

Auza chuckled again. "Perhaps Yuthura, that is why you are so very slim, and I am so very fat." He made another gesture to the twins. "Please Celyanda, leave us for now."

Tamar heard the twins' footsteps moving away in perfect unison. Auza was apparently content to keep the twi'lek slave with them, occasionally passing another tray his way.

"Celyanda?" Yuthura asked. "Two separate beings that have one name between them?"

Auza smiled condescendingly. "Two beings? No Yuthura, surely you felt it? Celyanda is but a single entity."

Behind the mask of his helmet, Tamar blinked in surprise. But now it was said it seemed so utterly obvious.

"How does that come about?" Yuthura asked, apparently sharing his curiosity.

"They used to be separate individuals, just like you and me. Cel Ungwin and Yanda Danthir, there names were once."

Yuthura frowned. "Not twins? I thought it was customary for human siblings to share the same family name?"

Another indulgent chuckle. "Oh, they're not twins. Not even remotely related in fact. At one time they looked completely unalike, I do believe." Auza seemed to be warming to the subject. "They used to be Jedi – a pair of extremely promising young Knights from Ossus. Of course, that was more than forty years ago."

"Forty years?"

"Well preserved aren't they? Somehow they tap into and augment each others life energies, and that keeps the aging process at bay." Auza moved on from the pink crustaceans to what looked like fish eggs smeared on small triangles of toasted bread. "If only I could find a way to duplicate the process. Think of the potential. But alas, the intricacies still evade me."

"So how did they come to be like that?" Yuthura asked after a slight pause, watching Auza shovel more food into his mouth with sick fascination.

Auza gave a vast shrug that was reminiscent of a landslide of rippling flesh. "Some kind of bond formed between the two of them. They were lovers, and so great was their love that they sought to join together through the Force as well as simply through the flesh. Sweet, isn't it? It brings a warm glow to my heart, just thinking about it.

"As their bond grew deeper they started to withdraw from the outside world, their separate personalities becoming slowly subsumed into a single whole, and even their physical appearance becoming gradually homogenised. Their Jedi Masters became more and more concerned by what they were seeing, and eventually it was decided that the two of them should be split up for their own good, before the 'damage' they were doing to each other became irrevocable.

"Cel and Yanda didn't see it that way, of course. They saw it as if their masters were trying to slice them in two – to callously and brutally murder them, for that was how separation would be. So they fought back. Six Masters and twelve Knights and Padawans perished at their hands before they fled together from Ossus."

Auza smiled. "Such a poignant tragedy, don't you think? I was . . . touched by their plight. How could I do anything else but take them in and protect them from the Jedi Order's callous injustice? And now, as you see, their joining has become complete, as has their happiness."

"I hadn't thought you such a humanitarian, Lord Auza."

"Oh, one does ones best." He gave a low, rumbling laugh that was reminiscent of something stirring deep inside an active volcano. "Of course, my reasons were not entirely selfless."

"Of course," Yuthura murmured.

"You see, Celyanda is the single most powerful Force user I have ever encountered. And I have met both Exar Kun and Darth Revan."

Yuthura didn't look particularly impressed or worried by the revelation, externally at least. "And that doesn't concern you at all? If, as you imply, they are more powerful than you?"

Another gruesome smile. "If they were Sith like you or I – grasping, ambitious creatures that we are – I might be slightly troubled. But all Celyanda wants is the chance to revel in their oneness and explore their inner self. They have no external ambitions at all. Indeed, I think the external world exists to them only as a mildly distracting intrusion, like a half-remembered dream that refuses to fade entirely away. They are quite content to heed my benevolent advice and guidance in all external matters."

"Handy that," Yuthura said softly. "But we are not here to discuss Celyanda, are we? Shall we move on to the matter in hand?"

"Yes. To business, then." Auza's eyes hardened dangerously as he looked at her. "I believe you murdered a good friend of mine."

-s-s-

Zaalbar let loose a thunderous howl as the droid he was attacking collapsed face-forwards with an echoing crash. The Wookiee had been hit by at least three more blaster shots during the battle, patches of his fur burnt black, but he was still standing, and still – seemingly – unimpaired.

Kreed couldn't help but be impressed as he looked on. Even a Mandalorian would be hard pressed to emulate such feats.

As he watched through his artificial eye – capable of seeing far beyond the visible spectrum – he saw Shakrill, cloaked by a stealth field, come up behind the Wookiee, seeking to take him unawares with a pair of matching vibroblades at the ready.

At the last moment, Zaalbar obviously sensed something, whirling around and parrying a stroke that would have decapitated him had it hit. Snarling the two off them faced off, swinging at each other furiously.

The rest of the battle all but over, Kreed allowed himself simply to enjoy the spectacle. The two – Wookiee and Trandoshan – simply hammered at each other. There was almost no subtlety involved: simply raw fury and bludgeoning power. Blow after blow rained in, vibroblade clashing with vibroblade, sparks flying.

Gradually the effects of Zaalbar's wounds seemed to tell on him, and he was slowly driven back, Shakrill manoeuvring the Wookiee remorselessly towards one of the gaping pits.

At the brink, though, Zaalbar somehow seemed to find one more last well of strength to draw upon. One of Shakrill's vibroblades went flying from his grasp. Then the Trandoshan was driven down onto one knee.

Kreed sighed to himself. As much as a part of him would almost enjoy watching the sadistic reptilian being cut down, there were other superseding considerations. As Zaalbar started another swing, he raised his weapon arm and casually shot the Wookiee in the chest.

Zaalbar staggered back with the impact, and, howling in surprise and fear, overbalanced backwards, tumbling into the pit.

The cry of outrage from close by took Kreed by surprise. Mission Vao, he realised, cursing beneath his breath as he span. He'd let his attention wander from her whilst watching Shakrill and Zaalbar do battle.

A barrage of blaster fire hit in him in the cybernetic half of his torso, making him stagger, but doing little more than superficial damage, melting the titanium surface but not penetrating to the combination of components and internal organs that lay beneath. He caught a blur of motion as the Twi'lek darted in at him, her stealth field fading. Something hit him hard in the side and there was a grinding sound of tearing metal. Lashing out, his titanium-reinforced fist caught her in the side of the head and sent her sprawling.

Damage telltales flashed warningly in his head. He looked down, feeling surprise as he saw the almost delicate looking vibroblade that was embedded, hilt deep in him. A few inches to one side and it would have pierced a power cell.

That would have been . . . nasty. As it was, nothing critical had been severed or pierced.

Gritting his teeth, he gripped its hilt, turning the blade's power off, before trying to withdraw it. At first, it wouldn't budge, but he persisted. After several seconds, it slowly slid free of him with a harsh, grating, scraping noise.

"Ouch," he commented to no one in particular.

A roaring sound filled Kreed's ears and he looked up. The bulk of a light freighter that could only be the Ebon Hawk was descending into the plaza, about a hundred yards from his position. Nice of you to show up just when all the fighting's done, hey Rath?"

Something moved in the periphery of his vision. Mission had groggily pulled herself to her feet again, blood trickling down the side of his face. Her eyes were filled with hard, bitter fury.

Tough girl, he noted. By rights, she should have been unconscious.

Suddenly her stealth field snapped on again and she dashed away from him, towards the Ebon Hawk. Still able to see her clearly because of his artificial eye, he started loping after her, not in any particularly urgency. She couldn't get away now.

As she reached the Ebon Hawk's ramp, she seemed to realise this.

If your friends are dead, girl, who's piloting it? He almost felt sorry for her as he came up behind her. It didn't stop him from punching her in the head again, this time making sure she was properly unconscious.

Sighing to himself, he bent down and scooped her limp form up in his arms.

-s-s-

"It is the Sith way," Yuthura responded calmly and with apparent disinterest. "When the student grows strong enough she replaces her master. It is the thing that stops us from stagnating, like the Republic and the Jedi. You know that as well as I."

"Perhaps," Auza allowed.

"Besides, it was not me who killed him."

Darth Auza stared at her, suddenly very different, the earlier almost bonhomie utterly gone, replaced by something utterly malevolent. Tamar was suddenly on a knife-edge of readiness. "You are sticking with your claim of being the apprentice of Revan then?"

"You don't believe me?" Yuthura asked coldly, matching him every inch of the way. "Why did you let me come here if not?"

"Perhaps your audacity tickled something in me. Perhaps I simply saw the opportunity to avenge my good friend, Uthar. You are long way from help and safety, little girl, all alone in a very dark and dangerous place."

Yuthura shrugged, apparently unperturbed by the abrupt change in tone. "You'll find that I am not entirely without resource, should it come to that."

"It will take more than a Mandalorian bodyguard to get you out of here alive, girl." He looked to Tamar, and suddenly the charm was back is if it had never gone away. "No offence to you. I have full respect for the warriors of Mandalore, and their particular philosophy."

Tamar grunted, and did his best gruff-voiced Canderous impression. "Sith and Jedi blood looks just the same as everybody else's. They die just the same when you spill it, and I've spilled entire lakes."

Auza laughed uproariously. "I would expect no less, my friend. I would expect no less." The note of his voice altered slightly, becoming almost a purr. "My association with the people of Mandalore goes back many years. Did you know that? In fact you might say with total accuracy that the war between the Republic and your people was down to me."

Tamar remained silent.

Auza apparently wanted a reaction. "What do you say to that, Mandalorian?"

"If it is true, then I thank you."

"You thank me?" Auza sounded amused, and more than a little surprised.

"The fight is all that matters, win or lose. And that was most glorious fight in our history. I was proud to be a part of it."

Auza chuckled. "And now you claim to serve the man who defeated you. Ah, the delicious ironies of life." The Sith Lord's gaze snapped abruptly back to Yuthura. "And so we are back to Revan. I had heard that he had been mind-wiped and remade as a loyal servant of the Jedi order. I had also heard that you had chosen to return to the light, and the Sith had placed a traitor's price upon your head."

"Yes, I had heard that too," Yuthura answered coolly. "I have heard of a lot of strange things of late. I have heard how Darth Revan has single-handedly slain the Jedi Council on Coruscant, with me standing at his side. Who can begin to know what to believe?"

There was a flicker in Auza's eyes that Tamar read as doubt and unease. It was quickly covered over again. "Funnily enough, my apprentice has an interesting take on that particular tale."

Yuthura burst out laughing with seemingly genuine and heartfelt amusement, her head tails writhing to reflect the emotion. "That was your apprentice? Let me guess – she has claimed credit for the council's demise herself? I don't blame her, I suppose. In her place I might have tried to do the same, I'll admit. Who wouldn't? My master was quite impressed with her – despite the fact she tried to kill him."

Auza didn't say anything, simply looking at Yuthura intently. Tamar got the impression that his confidence with the situation was slowly seeping away, like air from a punctured balloon. Which could be either good for them, or very, very bad, depending on exactly what sort of person Auza was.

"Is she here? I'd quite like to meet her again." Yuthura gave a sharp smile. "Just to let her know that I don't bear any grudges."

"And I am to believe that you have less reason to lie to me than my own apprentice?"

"I have no reason to try and impress you. And I haven't just failed in my appointed task."

Finally, Auza seemed to lose his appetite. "Let's get to the point shall we? What are you – no, what is Revan – offering me? So far, we simply seem to be fencing around to little purpose. And I do hate fencing so soon after a meal."

Yuthura sat back, ostentatiously crossing her legs. "Darth Malefic," she stated simply.

Auza made a vague waving gesture. "An ignoramus. His proper position is standing at my right hand. Wearing a collar and serving me canapés. A state of affairs that will shortly be the case."

"Really?" Yuthura arched an eyebrow. "I'm betting he says similar things about you. But eight months on from Malak's death and you're both still locked together in conflict, squabbling for supremacy. The Republic is on its knees, their Jedi protectors in a state of utter disarray. Yet the Sith are utterly incapable of taking advantage. Face it, neither you nor Malefic will ever rule while the true Dark Lord is still out there."

"So that is your offer: serve Revan. Not much of a sales pitch, I must say."

"I would call it . . . more of an alliance. You stood with Revan once. You were the one to first declare him Dark Lord, or so I have heard. You can do so again . . . and Malefic can be yours sooner than you might think." She smiled. "Right here, serving canapés."

Auza made a wet, snorting sound. "Let's say I choose to believe you – that you are Revan's chosen apprentice, and he himself seeks to regain his throne. I still don't see the advantage to me. He is but one man, with no great army at his back this time. No, I am minded to think that Revan is of the past – just as Malak is."

"One man who slew the Jedi council on Coruscant. One man whose name the Sith will flock to. And I think you underestimate the strength he already possesses. He is far stronger than he ever was before." She leant forward slightly in her seat, fixing him with her opal-coloured eyes. "When it becomes known that he has truly returned, the Sith will inevitably flock to his banner from yours and Malefic's sides, and those who opposed him will pay a price." Her lips twitched in a half-smile. "Do you really want to stand against him – the man who destroyed Darth Malak in the heart of his own fortress, surrounded by all the hordes of the infinite fleet? You are brave indeed, Lord Auza – or do you believe that Celyanda keeps you safe?"

Auza almost looked to be pouting, his mouth hideously wet. "I shall require some proof of what you say – of Revan's intent. Call it a token of good faith, if you will."

Yuthura inclined her head. "As you say. Might I enquire what form this token is to take?"

"I shall have to think on it. It is not a spur of the moment decision. If that is all? I'll have Celyanda escort you to your quarters. It has been a heavy lunch, and I grow weary." Auza looked away from her to the Twi'lek slave who had earlier been serving him food. "This here, by the way, is Nathalya."

Suddenly Tamar felt Auza touching the Force, directing a thread of it towards the slave.

"Was Nathalya," he amended.

A series of micro-charges embedded in the collar Nathalya wore beeped and then detonated with a noise like a dozen firecrackers going off. They ripped out her throat, almost severing her head completely in the process. She collapsed limply backwards, arterial blood spraying copiously as her life was casually extinguished.

"I have decided what I want from Revan to seal our alliance." As Auza spoke, Tamar found himself staring at the Twi'lek's corpse in numb horror. He could feel Yuthura's shock and fury at the casually brutal murder, barely contained. The sound of two sets of footsteps approaching from behind in perfect unison told him that there game was up, and he drew on the Force in readiness, no longer caring that it would give him away.

"What I want from Revan is a replacement Twi'lek dancing girl." Auza's voice was hard and cold. "Handily enough I see one sitting right here in front of me who fits the bill just perfectly. I'm sure he'll not object to me taking her. In fact, I think that's probably why he sent her in the first place."

Tamar heard a pair of lightsabers igniting behind him with a snap-hiss. He was already spinning round, drawing the Baragwin assault blade from his back and striking, faster than the eye could follow. Yuthura was just as prepared for the betrayal, and just as quick.

But Celyanda matched them, their blades clashing together to no advantage.

"Revan!" Auza's sudden, startled yelp of recognition as he felt the Force flowing strongly through 'Canderous' was very nearly a squeal of terror. Instantly a force shield snapped on, cutting off the side of the chamber containing his throne. A fraction of a second later the floor opened up and Auza's throne retracted rapidly into it as he made good his escape.

Left alone by the fleeing Sith Lord, Tamar, Yuthura and Celyanda faced off.

-s-s-

Consciousness returned slowly to Juhani. She almost wished it hadn't. The pain that came with it made oblivion seem much the preferable option.

It was a while, as she lay there – unmoving in an effort to keep the pain to a merely agonising level – before she realised that she could feel the Force around her again. She was too weak to do much more than simply sense its presence, but even that was comforting to some degree – to know that it was not gone from her forever.

Gradually her awareness managed to extend itself beyond the range of her damaged body.

There was a noise – a skittering, scraping sound. It repeated again, and again, and seemed to come from several places around her. Gradually her brain forced itself to stir – Mission; Zaalbar; the pain of that realisation made the multitude of physical hurts seem trivial. Groaning, she forced herself to lift her head though the effort almost made her black out again.

Her eyes adjusted slowly to the tiny amount of illumination. A human would have been completely blind in this degree of darkness, but her mirrored retinas were able to pick up and amplify the tiny threads of light just enough so she was able to see – albeit in colourless gradations of shadow.

Something moved nearby.

Her sense of the Force suddenly became more acute, and she realised that she was not alone. Mad, twisted, pain-wracked things full of aching, desperate hunger. Rakghouls. A lot of them. All around her.

Gritting her teeth against the multitude of agonies, she forced herself to rise onto hands and knees, ignoring the fact that she was doing herself more damage in the process. The circle of Rakghouls closed in, all but silently.